


Incoming Call

by sigo



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Anal Sex, Armitage Hux Has Feelings, Armitage Hux Has Issues, Banter, Blood, Blow Jobs, Bondage, Branding, Chancellor Armitage Hux, Clothes Kink, Darth Tantrum and his Evil Space Ginger, Hologram Sex, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Phone Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn, Possessive Kylo Ren, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Public Sex, Sort Of, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, Tattoos, The Duel of The Fates, oh also i need a blood tag for starkiller injuries this one aint sexual, tags after this one are fantasized about and not actually acted on, this ones just porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:22:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27087049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigo/pseuds/sigo
Summary: At the top of the proverbial mountain of galactic power, Chancellor Hux had no equals to consult or just to lay his troubles upon. Only inferiors at beck and call, tiptoeing around him to avoid the humming vibro-guillotine in the square. Well, there was ONE equal. Hux’s datapad lit up and chimed with an incoming direct call. Ren called more frequently than ever before, hardly a week going by without at least brief contact. Keeping tabs on Hux. He pressed the flashing notification on the screen, allowing for audio only. Fitting that Ren would call at exactly the moment that Hux was craving the companionship he’d lost with Phasma’s death. Ren was the least qualified to provide what Hux lacked.“Yes, Supreme Leader?”
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 16
Kudos: 224





	Incoming Call

**Author's Note:**

> A lil break from Huxloween for some DotF action. This takes place about 3 years into Hux's chancellorship so roughly 7 years before the Resistance mucks everything up.

_ But we both know how it goes -- I say ‘I want you inside me’ and you split me open with a knife _ .

Chancellor Armitage Hux sank onto the silken sheets of his overlarge bed and surveyed the room with a dull but uncomfortable sense of unbelonging. He missed his stark quarters on the Finalizer. Even then he’d had a few possessions that weren’t strictly regulation -- a crystal decanter and glass set (two in case one broke, as the single officer’s saying went), a black satin robe with pleats that disguised his frame just like his uniform did, a nice couch (until Ren stormed in one night and smeared filth from his robes all over the delicate light blue upholstery, the brute). The undeniable opulence of his chambers in the Capitol Tower unnerved him. He’d grown up with tales of the Republic’s greed, of Core World socialites and senators sampling so many galaxy-wide delicacies at state banquets that they took calorie purging stims afterwards to ward off after-meal naps, while the descendants of the Empire in the Outer Rim starved. The gleaming marble floors, and walls adorned with gold leaf, and bubbling indoor fountain here made Hux’s skin prickle occasionally in something that, if he were a different man, he might have recognized as guilt.

He’d met with a table full of fiercely demanding smugglers and warlords earlier, each of them yelling over the others, fighting for a response to their particular grievances over how Hux was spending their credits. Hux wasn’t one to flinch in the face of danger, and none of the First Order’s new financiers were as dangerous as the last one had been, but the meeting still triggered a migraine that lasted most of the day. They wanted -- well, thought they wanted to speak with the Supreme Leader. Hux had refrained from telling the assembled company that Kylo Ren would vivisect them if he had to listen to even a fraction of their petulant mewling that Hux did.

The warlords weren’t even the worst of it. In the time-honored tradition of one disaster after another, Hux’s next appointment was with the Nabooan ambassador. It should have been an easy one -- after being sanctioned under the Empire and then the First Order for assisting the Resistance, and being scorned by Resistance sympathizers across the galaxy as the birthplace of the Emperor, and with the tide of the current war pointing to the First Order’s inevitable victory, Naboo was desperate to crawl into the Chancellor’s good graces so that its citizens could finally lick their wounds. But then the ambassador had sprung a trap on Hux.

“May I present Queen Endimé Grinorra.”

Hux took the young queen’s hand when she offered it, noting her shimmering nails. He made no attempt at a verbal welcome. The only true power in the room rested on his shoulders and all of them knew it. There was no reason to feign niceties for a Mid Rim planet’s elected monarch. Endimé curtsied slightly, the strings of pearls dangling from her elaborate headdress clacking.

“Greetings, Chancellor,” she said. Her voice held the peculiar stiffness that Nabooan Queens affected, perhaps only to mask the fact that they were still children. This one could not be older than nineteen, and queens had been much younger in the past. “It is my fervent wish that Naboo forge a stronger alliance with the Order, to the benefit of us all.”

“I agree that it would benefit you greatly, my lady,” Hux said, smiling thinly. He knew he should try harder to be, if not likeable, tolerable. Convincing Ren that he was capable of pacifying the rotating wheel of dignitaries knocking on their door now that the First Order had taken Coruscant had been principal to finally escaping Ren’s pointless insistence that they  _ both _ go traipsing all over Wild Space looking for Sith artifacts. It wasn’t that Hux wasn’t interested at all in the treasures Ren dredged up -- some of them decorated his room -- but they couldn’t run an empire from the wastes.

“Queen Grinorra asked me to obtain an audience with you today, as she believes that a marriage would seal our alliance properly. Any empire worth its salt is in need of heirs, after all.” Ambassador Utinn smiled.

Hux’s face stayed neutral only by virtue of long practice. “I’m afraid I have no authority to make decisions on behalf of the Supreme Leader concerning matters of such a personal--”

The ambassador interrupted. “Forgive me, I should have specified. The Queen believes that a political marriage is best made between a Nabooan official and our galaxy’s Chancellor.”

This time Hux did blanch, looking between the graying ambassador and the painted baby-face of the queen. Electing young people to office out of some strange preoccupation with ‘the wisdom of pure hearts’ was one thing. Orchestrating a marriage for a girl not yet out of her teens was quite another, and Hux would object even if he weren’t completely, entirely gay. Endimé reacted too, seeing his disgusted expression.

“Not me!” She said at once, her voice slipping away from its rehearsed, stilted timbre. “I offer you my chief handmaiden. Rayenne is trained in the arts of combat and politics, and had a promising career in the last galactic senate. She is slated to serve as an advisor to the next queen elect.”

Hux’s eyes shifted to the woman who had just stepped forward, clad in a dusky purple robe with only her face showing. She was at least a more appropriate age, perhaps thirty. There was still the issue of Hux’s stolid attraction to men and aversion to fatherhood in any capacity. How to get out of this one…? Rayenne would welcome a negative response, Hux thought. Her face was schooled into blank pleasantness, but her eyes were cold with hatred. He had a good guess at the exact cause.

“How fortunate that you were absent from the Senate upon Starkiller’s firing, then,” Hux said, and watched as Rayenne’s face twitched. She put her hands together in front of her body, probably to keep from launching herself at him and clawing his eyes.

“Yes, my lord,” Rayenne said, to her credit not sounding as though the words choked her.

Feeling slow on his feet in the face of this unforeseen nightmare, Hux turned back to the queen and said lamely, “I will consult with the Supreme Leader. I assure you that no ill favor will befall Naboo in the event of my refusal.”

The ambassador and the queen and her assorted handmaidens all looked surprised, and Hux rushed through his goodbyes, dreading the sort of gossip that would spread. Half the galaxy already thought of him more as Ren’s toy than his equal, never mind that Hux commanded the military  _ and _ sat the throne in Ren’s absence. Giving the queen of Naboo the impression that he couldn’t even arrange his own marriage without Ren’s input would  _ not _ help to remedy that.

And now, alone in bed, a chilled bottle of dry champagne sweating next to a glass on his nightstand ( _ anything but Nabooan _ , Hux had instructed his protocol droid) Hux cataloged his emotions. He did have them, despite what his reporting officers might say if asked, but he kept a heavy lid on them after he’d considered each one, measuring and inspecting it for faults. Lying to oneself could only bring defeat, and Hux intended to keep the galaxy now that it was his. Well, half his. Ren had enough sense not to discard or demote Hux, and so he was a problem for later. In years prior, Hux had planned to dispatch him immediately after the dregs of the Resistance were well and truly drained. Now that Ren busied himself at the other end of the galaxy, Hux found that he was hardly any trouble, and his fearsome name did lend weight to Hux’s proclamations.

_ Absence really does make the heart grow fonder _ .

Outside past the balcony, speeders raced on all levels of the city. The wind was gentle tonight, and so Hux left the balcony wall open, letting the breeze lift his sheer curtains inward and play over his face. The rest of his skin was, as of yet, still covered. It was time to remedy that.

Clothing was the only luxury, besides whichever Force artifacts Ren saw fit to leave in his care, that Hux had fully embraced in the last three years he’d been Chancellor. Ren had started it as another one of his power plays. He commanded Hux, who had never lived outside a uniform, to ‘look the part’. Determined not to give Ren the satisfaction of watching him squirm, Hux leapt into it as a new challenge. He hired a tailor. In the beginning he stuck to black, and didn’t venture far from military cuts, but he had the shoulders and sleeves of his new clothing embroidered with lush designs embedded with crystals. In time he branched out to deep reds. Then to new styles. Capes, deeper necklines, sheer bits. Mitaka’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull once when Hux appeared in the War Room in a wine-dark ensemble that revealed a deep porcelain V of his chest. The next time Ren came home, twirling an antique purple saber hilt in one hand that he’d dug up from an abandoned temple, the prize destined for Hux’s display case, he stopped short when Hux turned the corner to greet him. Ren’s mouth had fallen open in shock at the sight of Hux in pure white robes styled cheekily after Ren’s own, with shining interlocked golden plates armoring his chest and forearms. Hux had been chasing that high ever since -- Ren’s big dumb mouth, rendered speechless.

He’d rounded the color wheel to blue by now. Hux began to shed his silvery-blue layered ensemble, built up from sheer panels so that it disguised his body without truly hiding his frame, like standing behind thick woodsmoke. Years before Hux would have felt the need to cross his arms over himself and flee to the nearest locked room in such an outfit, but now he found there was something powerful in letting those around him see more of himself. Brendol would roll in his grave, for one. And no matter how skinny or pale Hux was, no one could touch him. No one would dare. He’d already left his boots and flowing cape by the door. Hux loosened his wide leather belt and shrugged out of the shift beneath it now, pulling open the soft lacing in the front. He lifted his hips to push down and kick off the loose gray trousers he’d worn beneath everything, and so was nude. Almost. The knives on his left forearm and right calf came off in their sheathes. He left the knife strapped to his left thigh, and the intricate silver jewelry that looped around his throat and shoulders and ribs. It was a series of shining serpents devouring each other, the segmented metal soft and warmed by his skin. He sometimes wore this piece even when none of it would show, simply because he liked the feel of it.

Hux laid back in bed, datapad tossed beside him in case of an emergency and the rest of the evening spooling out in front of him. The sky was purpling, but nowhere close to dark. He felt too fatigued to read or practice saber forms. So he supposed he would lay here. Alone. Hux could not remember ever feeling this lonely. Before, he had goals to fixate on. Now all was done, and he’d never taken the time to curate a relationship of any personal sort. Certainly not a romantic one. Once he’d at least had friendship in Phasma, but now she was gone. If he still helmed the  _ Finalizer _ loneliness might not bite him as sharply -- those halls felt in some ways like friends. But Hux had left her behind and most of his crew where they belonged. Here on Coruscant, the only face from Hux’s past life was Mitaka, and Mitaka feared him just as much as he admired him. It was an unsteady base to build on.

He didn’t want a marriage, exactly. Not the stiff sort reserved for politics -- that would only mean a stranger haunting his chambers -- and especially not the sort meant for producing a host of snot-nosed brats. No, the curse of Hux family parenting would die with him. But at the top of both the Tower and the proverbial mountain of galactic power, Hux had no equals to consult or just to lay his troubles upon. Only inferiors at beck and call, tiptoeing around him to avoid the humming vibro-guillotine in the square. Well, there was  _ one _ equal. Hux’s datapad lit up and chimed with an incoming direct call. Ren called more frequently than ever before, hardly a week going by without at least brief contact. Keeping tabs on Hux. He pressed the flashing notification on the screen, allowing for audio only. Fitting that Ren would call at exactly the moment that Hux was craving the companionship he’d lost with Phasma’s death. Ren was the least qualified to provide what Hux lacked.

“Yes, Supreme Leader?”

Ren had set his own device for both audio and video, and so his unique face glitched into view, tinted blue. Hux tapped to adjust his settings and the image expanded to life-size, Ren seated in the cockpit of his  _ Silencer _ beside Hux’s bed. Ren’s face clouded in irritation.

“Turn your camera on.”

“Mm. I’m not decent.”

“Shy, Hux?”

Hux sighed and rolled over, groping at the other side of his bed for the robe he’d left there this morning. He pulled it on and knotted it. It was sheer, but there was enough of a dark green floral pattern on it to obscure him through a hologram. He switched on his video feed, and watched as Ren’s dark eyes flicked down his body and back up. Those sorts of looks weren’t new, but they lingered longer now that Hux put more on display than the occasional flash of wrist. 

“How goes your search?” Hux asked, sitting up and moving pillows around for better back support.

“You’re in bed already.”

“Another of your astute observations, Supr—”

“Don’t.”

“Ren.”

“Better. I found the cave system yesterday and the sunken Temple today. A group of Force-null Sith cultists inhabited it, but I dispatched them. I’ve still got another level down to search. I think the holocron will be there, or at least another clue toward it.”

“Fantastic,” Hux said mildly.

“Not for the cultists.”

Hux surprised himself by laughing. His sense of humor had always been morbid -- that was only a product of being raised beneath constant storms by the likes of Brendol. But he felt it had grown darker of late. Perhaps extinguishing five trillion lives and then dealing with the near-deadly fallout of Ren’s power grab had done it. Hux didn’t care either way. He could drink blood from skulls and not think any less of himself. And laughing made him feel better for the first time since the calamity of his meeting with the Nabooan queen.

“No. I imagine not,” he said. “What are you doing in your TIE, if you’re staying another night?”

“It’s too wet here to camp outside. Rain pouring down and swampy earth. I’ll be lucky if the lower level of the Temple isn’t flooded.”

“Then I’m very glad I didn’t go along with you. I’ve had enough rain to last me a lifetime,” Hux said, stretching his arms over his head and arching his spine. He’d ignored the champagne after ordering it, but he thought now that he’d have a glass after all.

It was Ren’s turn to chuckle. “It would be a tight fit, yeah. You’d have to sleep on my lap.”

“We’d have taken  _ my _ shuttle. You’ve spent your evening cooped up in that cockpit?”

“Part of it. I stayed in the cave awhile.”

“Reading hieroglyphs?”

“Drinking.”

Hux sat up, noticing the way Ren’s eyes jumped back up to his face from wherever they’d been glued an instant before. His voice came out incredulous. “Drinking?” Ren almost never drank, and especially not on missions. Getting him to imbibe half a glass of Corellian brandy in their first year of working together had been like pulling teeth. Ren reached down into the gloom by his right ankle and pulled up a flask, shaking it theatrically so Hux could hear it slosh. “I thought my chartreuse bottle looked a bit lower.”

“Guilty.”

“Drinking alone is cause for intervention,” Hux said, turning away to pop his champagne bottle.

“Things aren’t as lively without you here. You’d be telling me the rain isn’t so bad even as you sat there and shivered, I bet.”

“Oh no. I’m much more suited to life in the command center. You can keep your swamp planets and cultists to yourself. But, I’ll join you from here .”

Hux poured himself a generous glass and took a bracing swig. It was crisp. Dry and citrus-sour, and so bubbly as to almost burn. Perfect. The air had cooled as night arrived, the breeze now making Hux’s nipples pebble up beneath his robe, but he didn’t order the balcony wall closed. He turned back to Ren and the look on the knight’s face made him freeze. It was like looking into a mirror of his own soul, and a moment later Hux realized why. He hadn’t felt lonely when Ren had been routinely dragging him along on obscure and pointless missions. Ren felt that gulf too, it seemed. Wild rathtars couldn’t have made Hux confess it, but they worked better together after Snoke’s untimely end, neither of them trying to outdo the other once they had jostled shoulders and then landed back in dual command by their own design.

“You don’t have menial reports to memorize tonight?” Ren asked, opening his flask and tilting it up for a sip.

Hux downed half his glass of champagne with a grimace. He really hadn’t intended on clueing Ren in to the debacle with Naboo -- it was mortifying -- but now that Ren was ‘here’ and Hux had established in his own mind that he had no one else to talk to, the weight of keeping the secret seemed exorbitant.

“I’m wallowing, I suppose,” Hux said.

“Oh? Are the pressures of deciding which crown to wear getting to you?”

“I’ve never worn a bloody  _ crown _ ,” Hux sniffed. “But the ambassador from Naboo used his allotted time in an unconventional way this morning.”

“My grandmother was from Naboo. She reigned there.”

“Then Nabooan queens have never caused me anything but misery. This one wants me to marry one of her handmaidens. An  _ ex-senator _ . I’d be surprised if the woman in question didn’t already fantasize about smothering me in my sleep. And she hasn’t even heard me snore.”

Ren choked on the drink he was taking, coughing out chartreuse into his own lap. “Why--?” He asked, and then coughed again to clear his airway and wiped his chin on his sleeve.

“They want a less-breakable alliance. They think I want procreation.  _ That _ whole gambit.” Hux drained his champagne glass and sat up to pour again, and then thought better of it and exchanged the glass for the bottle.

“Why would they choose  _ you? _ ” Ren asked, his voice and face outraged.

“Ah, yes. Kick me while I’m down. That  _ is _ your style. Perhaps the queen feared  _ you’d  _ break her lovely maids in half.”

“Do you?”

Hux tipped the bottle up and swallowed. “Do I what?”

“Want...procreation.”

Hux groaned. “We’re not talking about this.”

“You brought it up.”

“Not that bit of it.”

“You’re wrong for it. They shouldn’t have asked you.”

“You think I’d be a bad father?” Hux raised an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Ren said firmly.

Hux scoffed, drinking again, temper rising. Rationally he knew he had no reason to be upset that Ren had merely arrived at the same conclusion that he himself had long ago, but it still stung to have his defects vocalized by another. His head swam, the champagne doing its job.

“You think I’d be a bad husband?” Hux asked, and regretted asking immediately. There was no answer that wouldn’t wound him in some way.

“I think you’d be a bad match for a senator,” Ren growled, uncharacteristically diplomatic. And then, more daring, “A bad match for a woman.”

“Oh is that what you think?”

“Am I wrong?”

“I could perform.”

“Could you? Perform affection...an act. Hollow.” Ren’s voice dripped with judgement. “And perform sexually? What happens when your new  _ wife _ wants to uphold her part of the deal for you? Could you get it up?”

“Don’t be crude.”

“Could you?”

“Do you think so little of my sexual capacity, Ren?”

“You’d rather I thought a lot of it?”

It would be easy to scoff again and make some cutting remark, and continue the game. A dozen witticisms danced at the edge of Hux’s tongue, a dozen ways to turn the argument around again and put Ren on the defensive, and well-earned. But Hux felt something go loose in his joints, something more than the effects of the alcohol. They’d reached this point many times before, the line between aggression of the regular sort and another kind entirely. With no one and nothing left in the galaxy as powerful as them, tipping over the edge seemed less risky.

“I’d wager you’ve thought of it a lot,” Hux said, staring into Ren’s eyes through the hologram, challenging him to deny it. The sky was indigo behind Kylo’s transparent form, the lights of speeders and neon billboards hazy off the balcony. It was rather like Ren was a ghost, intent on haunting him.

“You’re drunk,” Kylo said, his face angry but his voice sad. This, too, was unlike him. It would have made more sense for him to spit some half-baked nonsense at Hux and end the call in a huff.

“Hardly.”

“ _ I’m _ drunk,” Ren’s voice went even softer. One of his hands still clutched the flask. The other was on his knee, gripping it hard. White-knuckled. Hux could see that because Ren’s gloves were off.

Hux felt his pulse jump. “That seems dangerous.”

“Do you feel in danger?” Ren’s dark eyes seemed to bore into Hux even over such great distance.

Hux took another pull from the bottle, tilting it up farther. He didn’t. That was the short answer, though it was hard to articulate why, because he  _ should _ . Ren had proven time and time again that he wasn’t something to be trifled with. He was best kept at arm’s length. Then why was Hux reaching out at all, trying to pull him closer? Because Ren reached back. He always had. If nothing else, the man had always returned every volley Hux sent him. Hux felt deep despair well up in him at the realization that his best opportunity for human socialization was Kylo fucking Ren.

“You’ve never frightened me,” Hux murmured. For a moment he thought he’d spoken too softly to be heard, but then:

“No. I haven’t.” Ren smiled faintly, closed-mouthed. A beat. “Snoke told me that forming attachments was my greatest weakness. I’m...prone to it. Like some people are prone to alcoholism.”

“You’ve downed a flask of chartreuse alone in your TIE fighter. I think you’ve got a two-for-one, there,” Hux said drily.

Kylo laughed, louder than Hux had heard him laugh before. It sounded sort of goofy, an unselfconscious baritone hooting. “Stars, I  _ am _ drunk. That was terrible.”

“Admit you miss me,” Hux snorted. The ball was in Ren’s court, and it would be too easy for him to spit venom and put them back on course. Hux’s heart clenched. He wasn’t sure what he wanted more.

“I do,” Ren said simply, pushing them further out to sea.  Hux felt himself smiling before he’d given himself permission too, and then a warning siren went off in his mind.  _ What is this? _ Kylo must have seen the burgeoning panic in Hux’s eyes, even through the grainy film of a hologram. “Don’t,” he said plaintively. “Wherever you’re going, come back.”

_ We’re flirting _ , Hux thought. Not the arrogant posturing that they had always utilized as flirting before, but actual flirtation. It couldn’t be passed off as anything else.  _ I’m flirting with Kylo Ren _ . “I’m back,” he said. “I’m here.” He tipped the bottle up again and drained it, and set it aside on the floor, rolling onto his belly to do so. When Hux sat back up he noticed the way that Ren’s gaze was locked on the curve of his ass beneath his thin robe. Hux supposed it was a new sight, compared to the way his old greatcoat had obscured him.

“If I did think a lot of your ‘sexual capacity’--” Ren started, and Hux cut him off.

“We’re not going back to that. I want to forget the whole damned thing. Kriffing hells, Ren.”

“Forgive me for assuming that the nickname ‘Major Fux’ meant you had experience. Didn’t figure talking about sex would make you blush like a virgin.”

Hux spluttered, sitting bolt upright and feeling his face heat as if on command, going bright red. At least the blue cast of the hologram would dull the color on Ren’s side. The sizing might help too -- his image couldn’t be more than a square foot in the cockpit of the  _ Silencer _ .

“A  _ virgin? _ As if you’re not!” Hux screeched, hating the way his voice rose in pitch when he was alarmed. There was no way that someone like Ren, a lumbering and moody overgrown brat who spent half his life in a Jedi commune and then transferred right over to Sith training….

Ren raised his eyebrows, giving Hux a scathing look of reproach. “As a matter of fact, I’m not. But you’re protesting an awful lot--”

“I’m not. A virgin.” Hux ground out through his teeth.  _ Far from it _ . “I just haven’t the faintest idea where you heard such a vulgar--”

Kylo tapped two fingers to his temple meaningfully.

Hux swallowed. “Right. You know not everything you pick up in the minds of petty officers--” 

“It was Corran.”

“Ah.” Hux had not thought about Corran Alder in a very long time. He was stationed on the  _ Absolution _ for a time, before an untimely end in a skirmish with the rebels. Hux vaguely remembered Ren stopping on that destroyer for fuel once.  _ How humiliating _ .

“He thought you liked it when he called you--”

“Yes alright, enough. You know it was almost a comfort when Lieutenant Alder’s death report came over my desk because I believed he’d taken that to his grave with him.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Oh, by the tides….” Hux rubbed his hands over his face and up through his hair, loosening it from its styling.

“What are you wearing?” Ren asked sharply, leaning in and squinting.

“My robe.”  _ One of them _ .

“No. Underneath.”

_ Oh _ . Hux had nearly forgotten he still had his interlinked silver chains on, flashing underneath the sheer green fabric of his robe, and above it where his throat was bare. Hux bit his lower lip, weighing the chance of further mortification versus the tantalizing possibility that this would turn the tide against Ren, leaving  _ him _ red-faced and stuttering, and made his decision. He faced Ren's hologram dead-on, made eye contact, and let one shoulder of his robe slip down, his pale upper arm and a good portion of the jewelry coming into view. It gleamed in the night, flashing bright when speeders went by outside.

Ren leaned forward, his plush lips soft, eyes flicking up and down over this new section of exposed skin. Even with his newfound clothes hobby, Hux hadn’t bared this much to anyone yet. Especially Ren. Hux tried to think back suddenly to the last time he’d seen Ren in the flesh. It must have been at least two months ago. He found himself studying Ren’s hologram with the same intensity Ren lavished on him, looking for anything different. The hologram seemed brighter now. Night had fallen completely, and Hux hadn’t ordered his own lights up. His form must be nearly undecipherable even in the black cockpit of the  _ Silencer _ .

“Lights, fifty percent,” Hux said. The room brightened, and Ren jolted back as if struck, eyes widening.

“Were you wearing  _ that _ all day?”

“I did have clothes on.”

“Not your uniform.”

Hux hadn’t worn a standard uniform in over a year. “No.”

“The white one?”

“No. Blue.”

“I haven’t seen you in blue.”

“I’m in blue right now, as far as you’re concerned.”

“Kriff, Hux. You wouldn’t know funny if it bit you. What color is that?”

“Green.”

Ren hummed in acknowledgement, eyes roving over Hux with a new urgency now that the lights were up. “I can see through it.”

“You’re very welcome for the privilege.” The wind picked up, tousling his hair, and Hux shivered.

“Do you wear things that people can see through?  _ Outside? _ ”

“What does it matter to you?”

“I might need to schedule some executions.”

“Don’t be petty.”

“They don’t deserve to see you like this. No one does.”

“Except you?”

“I don’t know how to do this,” Ren said abruptly, almost vomiting it out.

Hux didn’t ask what ‘this’ he was referring to. He knew. “You’ve done abysmally so far. ‘What are you wearing’ is perhaps the oldest line there is, you know.” Hux said it playfully, the same tone of voice he’d used over the years to disparage Ren’s helmet and the disarray of his old quarters and his choices in the cantina.

Ren relaxed subtly. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“I suppose it did.”

“I’ve done...stuff. I wasn’t lying.” Ren’s face tinged purple in the hologram, blushing at last. “I just haven’t...I don’t know how to make something work...after.”

“I don’t recall offering anything  _ after _ . I didn’t even offer sex,” Hux admonished him. The awful truth of it, the thing that made sharp panic stab through Hux’s chest, was that he didn’t know how to navigate anything more than a casual hookup either. “You think we wouldn’t find our way through it? We always have. It can’t be worse than a whole bloody war.” Hux hoped not, at least. Though his stomach felt as though he were in a shuttle knocked into a planet’s field of gravity, tumbling end over end toward impact.

Ren’s body relaxed the last bit, returning to stasis, no stiff tension in his joints. He asked with an earnestness that Hux hadn’t heard from him even when he addressed his dead Master. “You’d want to try? With me?”

“We’ll be at each other’s throats again in a week.” Hux sighed. “Or by the end of this call.”

Ren waited, sucking his lower lip in to nibble on.

Hux tilted his head this way and that, considering. Strands of his hair came down and brushed his forehead. He felt the urge to pace, and ignored it. “Should I contact the Nabooan ambassador with my refusal?”

Ren grinned wide, flashing his crooked teeth. Crooked, but very white. And sharp. “I’ll do it.”

“NO. No. You’ll cause a galactic incident. I’ll handle it,” Hux snapped.

“So you’re admitting you want me?” Ren spread his knees apart a little more, as much as the cockpit would allow.

“Any longer-term arrangement is best made between officers of the same level of command. It’s convenient.”

“I know you wanted me before. I’ve seen it.”

Hux glared at him, but couldn’t maintain it long. “Yes, Ren. I’m  _ admitting _ that you’re convenient. Ha! Never thought I’d say that.”

“Quite the compliment from you.”

“It’s more than you’ve earned. The number of consoles I’ve replaced….”

“You’re not being honest.”

“Did you expect otherwise?”

“No. I’d just have liked to hear it.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“You’re not sorry.”

“Quite right.”

They both smiled. Hux felt that he was back on solid ground again. He wouldn’t have expected this kindness from Ren if they had broached this subject in the beginning, during their stint as General and Knight. It was a sort of gentleness, for melodramatic Ren to accept snippy ribbing where he obviously wanted romantic poetry.

“I like to be teased,” Ren said.

Hux’s face fell, sudden anxiety dampening his mood. “You can’t--” One of his hands clapped to the back of his neck, where he decidedly did not feel the sharp pain of Ren-in-his-thoughts.

“Not at this distance. No. I saw it on your face.” Ren’s eyes were sparkling with mischief.

“Twat.”

“You’re good at it. Teasing. I’d like it even more under different circumstances.”

“When did you turn into such a flirt?”

“You ignored my previous attempts. You were as cold as the surface of Ilum.”

“I imagine it didn’t deter your invasive little mind too badly.”

“You imagine?”

“Frequently.”

Ren swallowed audibly, his face flushing again. “Good.”

“You didn’t know? You never snooped through my thoughts at the start of night shift?”

“You’d have felt it.”

“True.”

“And I was nervous. That you’d...I don’t know. Avoid me, if I did.”

Hux’s eyes widened at that admission. Heat coiled low in his belly, ignited by the thought of Kylo Ren’s years-long apprehension about losing access to Hux. “Your tunic is wrinkled.”

“I’ve been sleeping in the TIE.”

“Take it off.”

Ren brought his huge hands up to his collar, briskly undoing hidden clasps down to his belt, unclipping that and letting it drop to the floor. Hux winced, hoping the tracker he’d stowed inside it wasn’t damaged. Ren tugged his shirt open and slid his arms out of it, his broad chest naked now. Hux felt as though he’d been doused in fuel and then asked to light someone’s cigarra, his whole body going up at once.

“What’s your next request?” Ren asked, leaning back and stretching, probably just to show off the way his abdominal muscles rippled when he arched his back.

“It wasn’t a request.”

“You’d try and give orders to your Supreme Leader?”

“I’d succeed.”

“Will you take them as well?”

“You know I will.” Hux found himself leaning in just as Ren had done before, holding his breath. He expected a similar request -- lose the robe, show me more of that chain, et cetera. But Ren pivoted.

“What did you imagine my ‘invasive little mind’ got up to, each time you brushed me off?”

Hux made a sound exactly between a laugh and cough. This felt like treacherous ground. Bruise Ren’s ego and he’d be just as likely to choke Hux as kiss him when he returned.  _ Don’t think about kissing him. Kriff _ . 

“I’ll know if you lie. You’re good, but I’m better. I know you, Hux.”

“When you tried to lecture me about that droid,” Hux began, and bit back the urge to point out that he’d been right about the entire bloody mess with the droid and the  _ girl _ , the one that Ren started mooning over--

“The droid,” Ren prompted. Hux thought he shivered, but it might just be a glitch on the holo feed.

“And you got in my face and pointed your finger at me, and I told you--”

“I remember.” Ren’s voice sounded scorched.

“Must you keep interrupting? Anyway, after you stormed off I thought...I imagined you going back to your quarters and jerking off in that sullen way you did everything back then. Maybe crying. Destroying something after and not reporting it to me.”

Ren’s face was unreadable, as frozen as his mask. “What did  _ you _ do after? Did you touch yourself?”

“Not immediately.”

“But you did.”

“Yes.”

“Did you imagine me touching you?”

“That time? No.”

“Other times?”

“Yes.” It was nearly a hiss. Hux wanted to palm himself and roll his hips up. His cock was stiffening. Soon it would undisguisable beneath the barely-there fabric on top of it.

“Have you imagined me fucking you?” Ren asked..

“Have  _ you _ imagined it?”

“I have.” Ren’s voice was impossibly rich, dipping lower than usual. It made Hux’s skin pebble up pleasantly. There was a noticeable bulge in the front of Ren’s leggings. Well, more noticeable than usual.

“Show me how you touch yourself when you’re thinking of that.”

“Say it.”

“What?”

“When I’m thinking about fucking you. I want to hear it in that prim accent of yours.”

Hux fixed his eyes on Ren’s, feeling himself shift automatically into the facial expression and rigid posture he used when he was dissatisfied with his crew, the glare that would reduce most of them to trembling. Not Ren. Never Ren -- though Hux had now confirmed that it did induce an equally useful reaction in him. He lowered his voice just like he had long ago, purring  _ careful Ren _ .

“Ren. Show me how you touch yourself when you think about fucking me.”

Ren inhaled sharply, eyes going dark with lust. He shifted in his seat, pulling his leggings down just enough to let his cock spring up, and  _ hells _ he was huge. Hux had suspected as much just looking at the rest of Ren, but it still felt like a cosmic injustice. Ren was a hulking beast, breathtakingly attractive, imbued with the power of a legend, and  _ also _ hung.

_ And he wanted me so badly it made him nervous to traipse into my mind at night. In case I disapproved _ . All envy left Hux, replaced by something dark and heady and warm like spilled blood.

Under Hux’s scrutinizing gaze, Ren started to stroke himself, running his thumb over the slit to spread shining precome as much as he could. He was soon breathing hard, his grip tightening on himself, hips thrusting up minutely into his fist. He grunted occasionally, his face pinched like he was trying to stifle himself.

“I  _ imagined _ you quite loud,” Hux said pointedly. Giving permission.

“Fuck,” Ren gasped, pace quickening. He started to moan as he worked, and Hux felt like he was floating. He leaned toward the hologram, the feeling of his palm flat on his bed grounding him. He brought his other hand to his own erection, palming it through his robe like he had wanted to, rocking himself against it. He tried to memorize the sounds Ren was making, but his brain felt like jelly. Ren whimpered then, his cock throbbing in his hand.

“ _ Stop _ .” Hux snapped.

Ren gasped, his face utterly dismayed, but he did. He took his trembling hand away from himself, though he seemed unable to stop shifting his hips subtly up against nothing, trying for friction that wouldn’t materialize. He bit his lower lip again, hard enough that when he stopped it was darker. It would be very pink, if he were here.

“I think about your mouth so often I could...I could have designed two more superweapons in the hours I’ve spent thinking about fucking myself into your perfect mouth. I’d have you gag on me until you learned not to from rote memory.”

Ren’s lips went slack, open. His hand twitched back toward his cock and then he gripped both his knees instead, his chest rising and falling with each shaky breath he took.

“It’s what you’re made for.” Hux smirked. “Look at you. The  _ Supreme Leader _ , following every command I give him.”

Ren blinked, remembering himself. Remembering he’d threatened Hux with orders of the salacious variety. “Untie your robe. Don’t take it off.”

Hux sat up on his knees, unknotting the green velvet tie of the robe and letting the fabric fall open, baring himself. All the important bits, as far as this evening went anyway. His cock, flushed and hard and leaking within its halo of closely-cropped orange pubic hair, his chest and his small pink nipples, and the links of silver jewelry glittering on his skin. They crossed his chest in wide loops, bits hanging down to his navel. Ren wasn’t getting the full picture of course, the color sapped out in the holo. Ren ducked his head, squinting at the display in his TIE, trying to make out every detail.

Ren gripped himself again, not content to wait for permission. A little show of defiance. Hux let him have that. For now. Hux could just barely hear the sound of Ren palming himself, rhythmic skin-on-skin. Their datapads were configured to automatically reduce sounds determined to be background noise. Ren’s breathing, Hux could hear more clearly. He touched himself lazily. Not his cock. He ran his hands up his thighs and then drew them away, sitting back and swinging his legs around, reclining against too many pillows. There wasn’t any purpose in Hux’s movements yet besides testing. Teasing. Hux smirked when he heard Ren’s breath hitch.

“You’re not...do you need…?”

“It is troubling you?” The answer was yes; Ren’s eyebrows were creasing, his motions slowing. Hux feigned ignorance.

“Touch yourself.” It was an order, but Ren wasn’t very good at giving them to Hux. He never had been -- the notes rang flat. Hux rolled his eyes. “ _ Hux _ ,” Ren said, and now they were getting somewhere. Hux was adept at showing outward disinterest to his crew no matter the issue. He was used to Ren seeing through him, but with the knight leagues away...why hadn’t Hux taken advantage of this sooner? He was more turned on now than he could ever remember before in his life, at the sound of his own name growled out of Ren’s throat. And Ren was none the wiser. He was beginning to doubt, wide eyes getting shiny. It was all Hux could do not to take himself in hand. Pure narcissism, perhaps, but no one in the galaxy was perfect.

_ Their _ galaxy. Their empire. Hux crossed his arms behind his head, watching Ren with interest.

Ren licked his lips. “I want to put my mouth on you.”

It was a clumsy sentence, but the sentiment…. Stars. Hux felt slick precome slide down his shaft, overflowing from the head. He wanted to wrap slender fingers around himself and stroke. He kept his hands where they were, safely away. Ren would have to work harder than that. Hux could wait him out and have a wank after the call ended, if need be. He’d come just as hard thinking about Ren’s acute frustration.

“I’d like to mark you for everyone to see. No one would dare to take you from me,” Ren started again.

“And they say romance is dead.”

“I’d wear your mark too. You could brand my face. I don’t care.”

The previous statement was a bit of a wet blanket for Hux -- he already worried about being seen as an owned object of Ren’s -- but the second hit him like a lightning bolt. It was unexpected, incredibly forthright, and utterly maudlin. His cock throbbed. His heart pounded. Before he’d realized it Hux had lowered his arms again. He caught himself in time and put them down on the sheets instead of on his own needy flesh.

Still, Ren had seen. He looked disgustingly smug. “I’d be yours and everyone would know.”

_ Damn it _ . Hux wanted to touch himself now. He took a deeper breath than normal.

“You could put a tattoo above my brow. You’d see it every time I sucked your cock.” Ren was back to stroking himself, secure in the knowledge that he was getting to Hux. Fiend. “You could mark my hands too.”

Hux gasped, another jolt of intense want hitting him, and finally grasped himself, spreading precome around with his thumb and curling his fingers naturally into the grip he’d perfected over the years. What if it were Ren’s hand instead? Big and coarse and rough, the hold too tight and eager, and with Hux’s name inked dark onto the back of it, Ren’s other hand digging clawed fingers into his thigh, the First Order symbol on it?

“Hells,” Hux said aloud. The fantasy shifted as he added to it, flipping through his old selection of masturbatory material, most of it embarrassingly Ren-centric even back in the days of Starkiller. Sucking dark bruises into Ren’s throat, splitting open those gorgeous plush lips with his teeth. Ren on his knees, eyes watering as Hux thrusted into the back of his throat as punishment for some miscellaneous destruction, and  _ yes _ , with Hux’s brand on his face. Alternatively (and he buried this one deep when Ren was within brain-searching distance) Ren taking him from behind over the remnants of a control panel, Hux’s sharp tongue gone dull in his mouth, lecture forgotten as Ren slammed into him. It had been idle infatuation then, or so Hux had told himself. He knew Ren was interested -- the man’s face was comically expressive. Ren knew Hux was interested -- he could read minds. And they did nothing about it, and would never do anything about it, except here they were now.

Teasing Ren was perhaps a secondary pleasure to being teased by him, another world-shattering revelation. The old fantasies reconfigured and changed shape, becoming new possibilities. He could have Ren between his thighs on the throne. Chained to his bed. Hux spent a minute on that one, switching the image back and forth between Ren collared and bound and himself at the mercy of Ren’s whims. With his name on Ren’s face for the galaxy to see, Hux pictured himself beneath Ren’s heel without qualms. Hux would commission new and exciting underthings for Ren to discover. Crystals, lace. He’d wear more layers, more straps and chains, giving Ren a run for his credits. See how many Ren could take off nicely before he lost his patience and started ripping. Hux quickened the pace of his hand on his cock, orgasm much closer than it had seemed. He wrenched his eyes back to Ren’s face, mapping it, picturing him strung out and begging.

“What are you thinking of?” Ren’s voice was rough. Ruined. Irritated too -- he no doubt wished he could just barge in and see. It was a pain to ask. Then, before Hux could respond. “Do you want to fuck me?”

Hux pictured it. He’d bend Ren’s big body over his balcony railing. Let him look out onto the drop, let the teeming center of Coruscant see their Supreme Leader reduced to a whimpering mess under their Chancellor’s ministrations. Hux’s hands braced on his hip and back, thrusting himself deep into Ren’s willing body, making him moan louder than he had tonight. Much louder. Hux moaned then, and came, spilling over his stomach.

“ _ Fuck _ . Hux, oh fuck,” Kylo tugged himself twice more and followed Hux over the edge. He was panting now, an edge of hysteria to it. “That was-- are you…?”

“Very.”

For a time they both recovered. Hux heard the speeders outside again, and looked up in alarm before he realized his billowing curtains were still drawn. The casual observer might not have seen anything. He was sweating. With a grimace, Hux shed his robe and ineffectively mopped his stomach with it, and then dropped it off the bed. He unclasped his jewelry too, setting it more carefully on the nightstand. He shifted in bed, turning on his side facing Kylo and pulling a blanket over himself. Kylo had already tucked his softening cock away, but had yet to put his shirt on. Sweat dripped down his chest. Hux wanted to lick it off.

“When you return--” Hux started.

“You’ll let me touch you?” Kylo asked, managing to be guarded and eager at once.

“Of course.”

“And you’ll let me kiss you?”

“We’ve just had sex, of sorts. Yes.”

“And--”

“Everything. Within reason. I’m tired, Ren.”

“You’re kicking me out?”

“You want to watch me sleep? Actually, don’t answer that. Yes, I’m kicking you out for tonight. Consider it an incentive to come home sooner.”

“Right now.”

“Don’t be dramatic.”

Ren paused, weighing something. “Hux, please….”

Hux blinked once in shock. He didn’t think he’d ever heard that word come out of Ren’s mouth before. “Whatever it is, I’m inclined to say no.”

“Tell me what you’re thinking. I can’t stand not hearing it.”

“I’m very glad you can’t.”

“Hux.” An edge came back into Ren’s voice. Anger, frustration.

Hux sighed, shifting into a more comfortable position and looking up at Ren with an expression that he feared was disgustingly fond. “Do you remember what you said to me on Starkiller, after everything was ruined? Largely by your fault, I might add.”

It was Kylo’s turn to look shocked. “No. You’re the one that found me?”

“Stars, Ren, who else?”

“No, I mean...you came yourself?”

“I did. You don’t remember what you said.”

“No.” Ren looked nervous.

“You were bleeding quite a lot. It was all over the snow and then all over the shuttle, running down your side and filling your boot.”

“What did I say?”

Hux took a deep breath and let it out. “You told me, _ I owe you, I owe you everything _ .”

Ren’s eyes burned with faint recognition. “You yelled at me.”

“I did. I lost my temper. You just kept going on, slurring your words together and clinging to me, getting blood all over me too. Saying  _ you saved my life, I know what you want, just tell me and it's yours _ . And I told you not to bother. I said I’d rather kill you myself than let a crumbling planet swallow you. You were quiet after that.”

“Do you still want to kill me?”

“Part of me always will.” Hux mused. “But it’s more interesting not to.”

Ren smiled again, looking lovesick. “I can stay interesting. I promise you.”

“That sounds more like a threat.”

“I’ll come home tomorrow.”

“Another threat.”

Hux tapped his datapad and ended the call, and then felt the fatigue leak out of his body after all. He lay awake, listening to the fountain and the wind and the engines speed by. He got up, perturbed, and nearly tripped over the discarded champagne bottle. Angry, he picked it up and threw it down on the marble floor. The glass was clear, and the shards glittered like stars. It was a momentary rush of emotion that he would pay for later. No matter how thoroughly he swept up the mess, he was sure to miss a piece and cut himself on it.

**Author's Note:**

> Hux's robe is J Lo's green dress imo. He also singlehandedly keeps Space Savage X Fenty in business. This is a work that I edited so much I hate it but what can ya do?  
> Line @ the beginning and part of the dialogue at the end is from Wishbone by Richard Siken, which if you haven't read I recommend checking out. I recommend buying Crush and reading all the poems just because they're great. Wishbone in particular is a kylux mood.


End file.
